


People of the Book

by ambyr



Category: Bel Dame Apocrypha - Kameron Hurley
Genre: Exile, Gen, Jews In Space, Judaism, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:49:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the spidery strokes of his tattoos, Khos carries the memory of his people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	People of the Book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marina/gifts), [sabrina_il (marina)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marina/gifts).



> Set between _God's War_ and _Infidel_. Tremendous thanks to Damkianna and summercloud for the beta.

There is no place for prayer in Khos's green and well-watered neighborhood, filled with Tirhanis fat from the profits of war. He doubts the whole suburb has enough Mhorian men to form a minyan. And so once a year, when his portion is needed, he takes the long, slow train ride to the dusty Mhorian slums, like a ladybeetle migrating south in search of warmth.

He does not tell Inaya where he is going. It is easier, simpler, if she assumes he visits his second wife. She understands his need for women, even if she hates it; she does not understand his need for prayer. Her conversations with God are private. She has rejected the mediation of priests.

In the synagogue, the men are already gathered. They do not like Khos, do not trust him. The Mhorian community is small in Shirhazi, and rumors spread quickly. It is well known that he keeps a wife, two wives. That he lives with women. That he practices abomination.

They would send him away if they could, unfit, unclean. But he has something they need: his parsha. Perhaps, when they are older, one of the other men's younger sons will take up needle and ink and copy Khos's chapter onto his own chest. Khos thinks he would let them, if they asked, though it would render him redundant, fully outcast at last. It is better than the knowledge being lost. Already, there are too many chapters this community of exiles lacks, too many that can be heard only in Mhoria.

But for now their sons are young, not yet of age to take on the burden of the book. And so it falls to Khos to come here, once a year in late spring, and be read.

In the antechamber he strips off his sandals and thin, gauzy bisht. Further in, there are tiny cubbies for storing clothes, and he folds away his trousers and inner robe, his wedding band and his boxers. One should stand naked before God.

Then he bows his head and steps through the final door into the sanctuary. There are no soaring ceilings here, as in Mhoria, only battered, bug-secretion walls. The synagogue was a shop front before the Mhorians converted it. There is one window, near the back of the hall, that casts in green-tinged light through its thick filter. A single globe of light bugs, kept constantly fed, illuminates the front. Khos goes to stand beneath it, meeting no one's eyes. They do not try to meet his.

 _It's not prayer_ , he thinks about telling Inaya, _it's penance_. But she would think he meant penance for his double life, his two wives, or perhaps for his flight from Nasheen. He does not regret leaving that harsh country; he does not regret his decision to live with women, to tear to shreds the wall between male and female he had been raised to venerate. He _doesn't_. He has heard the book since childhood, as every Mhorian has, and nowhere in it are words that command the level of separation his countrymen practice as a matter of course. His choices are for God to judge, and he thinks God will judge them fairly.

But he regrets the hurt he caused his father--and probably his mother, though he has not so much as exchanged a letter with her since he became a man and will never know her feelings. He regrets that he will never raise sons who know the peaceful beauty of this moment, when the rabbi comes toward him, standing on the bimah, touches a finger to the first of the spidery letters inked on Khos's chest, and begins to sing.

Khos knows, because the rabbis told him so when he was young and still applying himself to his studies, not to catching glimpses of wrists and ankles through latticework walls, that once his people wrote their book with pens, not needles. That they used the skins of cows and oxen and other unimaginable animals bigger than dogs, bigger than sandcats, bigger than any insects he has ever seen.

But in the long, cold years that they traveled in space, they had no livestock, no hides to tan. And as generation passed into generation and their ship still failed to find sanctuary, their scrolls began to crumble. Ink never meant for the cold, dry rooms of starships flaked away.

They had computers--something like slides, Khos thinks--but the book was very clear in its rules. It must be written on hide. And so they turned to the only skin they had: their own. They are, after all, the people of the book, have been so for longer than any others claiming that title.

Like his father and his father before him, Khos bears a chapter inked on his torso, long words scribed in blue ink that extend to wrap his arms and legs. He cannot read it, not without twisting and turning before a mirror. Some words would hide from him even then. But that is not the point. One is not meant to read the book alone.

Instead he stands motionless in the sanctuary, letting his nostrils flare with slow, shallow breaths as the rabbi traces the words one by one and chants them aloud for the whole congregation to hear using melodies their people carried with them through the stars.

He will not come back next week, when it is Yosi's turn to be read, nor the week after, when Ari takes his place on the bimah. He knows his reception here is conditional on being needed. Were he to return before next year, they would do more than fail to meet his eyes. His presence profanes the sanctuary. Only what he carries in his skin is welcome.

But for this one day, he closes his eyes and basks in the beauty of the rabbi's voice, in the words that tie him to his ancestors, in the touch that speaks not of desire but only of belonging. He closes his eyes and feels comforted, at home.


End file.
